Apparently, people may have actually listened to Vince and sent out fake Vice Presidential pick announcements in advance of Barack Obama’s VP selection. Obama generated a lot of buzz for the decision by telling the press that he’d announce his choice via text messages and email blasts to his supporters.

Joe Biden was named as the Vice presidential candidate this morning, but before the news actually broke there were tons of hoax emails. CNN reports there were scams claiming that Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, and Kathleen Sebelius had been chosen. One of the e-mails came Friday morning from “obama08campaign@aol.com” and reached many prominent Washington reporters. I wonder if the pranksters behind these announcements were actually hoping to influence the selection process or if they just did it for the lulz.

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As the Beijing games kick into high gear, Internet watchdogs are warning against a rise in Olympic spam. SANS Storm Center, an organization dedicated to monitoring and analyzing spam attacks and computer virus threats, says computer users can expect to receive spam emails with Olympics-themed subject lines and text encouraging readers to click external links where they can be asked to give out their personal information or hit with malware.

There’s already been one high profile incident of Olympic spam involving news update emails purporting to be from CNN that actually led to fake codec updates packed with a nasty Trojan. Personally, I don’t fall for any spam schemes that don’t promise nude pictures of Hollywood starlets, but all you sports fans out there should be on guard when perusing your inbox this week.

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Spam is probably one of the top choices for peoples pet peeves, at least it is for us. The Spamhaus Project has compiled a list with detailed information of the 200 people and companies that control about 80% of all the spam on the net.

Us here at Gearfuse are encouraging you to revolt and take a stand. Send as much hate mail and spam related floods to these people as you can. Give them a taste of their own medicine. And we all know the only way to stop a disease is with a little bit of medication. Just please, no death threats. — Andrew Dobrow

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